720 – [Hungry Curse Orb]

I’ve decided to give up on fighting at a distance. I turn around, flying straight back towards the taotie.

A shootout against its long-range skills is a bad idea. Rather than thinking of how I can react to [Earth Mother’s Lament], [Heavenly Father’s Anger], or [Hungry Beast’s Flame Prison Wind], it’s more useful if I avoid letting them be used against me in the first place.

However, if I were to fight entirely at close range, it would probably be impossible for me to beat the taotie’s toughness and power.

I’ll fight mainly at medium distance, but I’ll dive in to score damage if I see an opportunity. That’s the best way to use my advantages as an apocalypse.

The taotie has a lot of ridiculously powerful skills, but those ultra-long range ones shouldn’t be usable if I stay close. At mid range, all I have to worry about will be the tentacles and poison.

I’ll have no choice but to bear some damage from the poison while I fight. The taotie is insanely powerful, but my stats as an apocalypse also me a power type, albeit not to the same extreme.

I begin to fly in a circle around the taotie.

Steady damage at this range, while keeping an eye out for close-range opportunities, is my best way of fighting. At this distance, I should be able to respond to anything it does.

“OOOOOOOOOh!”

One of the taotie’s tentacles whips towards me. I swerve to the side, and then respond with a [Dimension Claw].

At the same time as the taotie protects its body with tentacles, its eyes glimmer with light. The tentacles in front of it rapidly petrify, turning to solid stone.

The stone tentacles are sliced apart by my [Dimension Claw], but with their hardness boosted by the  petrification, hardly any damage passes through to the main body behind them.

…That skill just now must have been [Petrifying Demon Eye]. I had mostly put it out of mind, as that sort of skill tends not to be very effective against an opponent of the same rank, but the taotie used defensively on itself. It’s the first time I’ve seen it used that way.

Using the moderately costly [Dimension Claw] just to take out a few tentacles isn’t a great rate of exchange for me. Should I try pressing the attack?

No, if I attack too hastily, there’s a good chance I’ll take a lethal hit. Even if the damage I take isn’t immediately lethal, I’ll still run the risk of getting overwhelmed before I can disengage.

I have the [Butterfly Dream] revival skill, so I could rely on it for a refuel of MP, and then leverage my endurance advantage to win. But the fight against Demon Lord Baal should be even harder than this fight, and there’s also a good chance I’ll need it when I fight directly against God’s Voice.

In the first place, [Butterfly Dream] seems too suspicious. If I can get through without using it at all, that would be best. I don’t want to fight with an assumption of using [Butterfly Dream].

There’s no need to rush. I’m not about to become a complete stalemate any time soon. If I get impatient and rush, I’ll be the one to suffer. I’ll keep learning how the taotie fights while searching for an opening.

I fly around, poking at gaps I see between tentacles with [Dimension Claw], causing the taotie to use [Petrifying Demon Eye] to block each time.

In the midst of our back-and-forth, the mouth in the taotie’s chest opens. A skull of purple flames shoots from inside.

…This is probably the [Hungry Curse Orb] skill.

【Normal Skill [Hungry Curse Orb]】
【A skill to restrain the souls those the user eats, which can then be filled with mana and shot out.】
【The [Hungry Curse Orb] seeks the living to devour them, exploding in a burst of flames and curses on contact.】

…A magic-bullet type with a tracking function. It sounds like my [Curse Knight]. It’s particularly dangerous in this situation where I can’t get too close or too far. It’s an annoyingly well-positioned skill for covering the taotie’s weakness.

The [Hungry Curse Orb] approaches me as I dodge some more tentacles. I’m dangerously close to getting pincered. I’d like to check how effective its tracking is, but I can’t afford to let the [Hungry Curse Orb] run loose.

I flap my wings and guide the wind produced with my claws, pouring mana into it to shoot it out. My [Wind Slash] causes the skull to rupture in an explosion of purple.

The taotie takes advantage of the distraction to lift its forelegs up.

It got me…! At this distance, its faster for it to slam its legs down than for me to use [Dimension Claw]. I increase my flight speed.

『[Earth Mother’s Lament]!』

The desert shakes. A huge shockwave races along the ground. I twist my body, just barely managing to dodge it.

“OOOOOOOOh!”

The taotie bounds towards me, its mouth open wide. It used [Hungry Curse Orb] as a distraction so it could throw me off-balance with [Earth Mother’s Lament].

I flick my tail in between its tentacles, slamming it into the taotie’s head.

“OOOh!”

I try to use the recoil to escape, but the tentacles wrap around my tail.

I guess it was optimistic to hope that’d work…

I pound my wings to try and fly away, but its power is too much for me to overcome. The taotie pulls itself towards me, wrapping more tentacles around my body.

“OOOOOOOOOOH!”

The taotie raises an arm. It swings its claw towards, the full force of its over-ten-thousand attack behind it.

I block with my foreleg, but the taotie’s claw easily breaks through my scales, cutting through muscle and bone. Poison seeps into my body from the wound, turning my arm a deep purple, and making it difficult to move.

“GuuuuuUUUU…!”

Sharp pain jolts through my arm. I definitely can’t afford to take a direct hit from that…!

Still holding me tightly, the taotie prepares to swing with its opposite arm. It’s not planning on letting up.

But I’ll teach it that grappling me was a bad move!

I produce a magic circle centred on the taotie.

『Freeze in the ice of hell! [Cocytus]!』

A huge ball of ice covers the mouth in its chest. It’s the apocalypses’s ice magic.

【Normal Skill [Cocytus]】
【A magic skill that summons the ice of hell, and manipulates it freely.】
【The ice can freeze anything, and will never melt.】
【It rapidly drains the heat from the surroundings, so unexpected damage may occur.】
【Once the ice has been deployed, it is practically impossible to erase, so caution is needed.】

Thanks to it grappling me, the taotie couldn’t move away to dodge.

“Goh… Ga-gah!”

The taotie’s giant mouth trembles.

『You can’t even scream!』

The tentacles loosen. I reach out and ram my claws into its face, knocking it away from me and sending it tumbling across the sand. It gets to its feet, its face crushed by my claws.

“Ga-ga-gu!”

The taotie bites through the [Cocytus] ice, scattering fragments. Some of the ice that had fused to its flesh still remains, with the area around its mouth reduced to a torn and bloody mess.

『I’d hoped that would shut your mouth for good.』

I begin casting my next magic. Above me, a large ball of flames floats.

『Let’s see if you can handle this! [Dite]!』

Like [Cocytus], this is another skill I gained up evolving to an apocalypse.

【Normal Skill [Dite]】
【A magic skill that summons the flames of hell and shoots them in a spherical shape.】
【The flames will continue to burn until the target is reduced to ashes.】